The Day of the Mouse

Throughout my childhood I never once experienced a mouse in the house. With her extreme fear of bugs and rodents and pests and animals, my mother was a pest-control expert. She read everything available at the time. She had no qualms about spraying toxic poisons throughout our home. She was a veritable Hitler when it came to pests.

My handy-dandy paperback dictionary defines ‘pest’ thusly: “A person or thing that is troublesome, destructive, etc.”

We lived all over the country but we never had a mouse in our house. We did experience cockroaches, however. When we lived in the American Southwest Desert we experienced cockroaches that were 3 to 5 inches long. They were almost as big as a mouse, only much creepier — and faster. Our mother kept saying, “The world will not be safe until all cockroaches are exterminated.” She sounded like Hitler (or Trump).

It wasn’t until many, many years later that I experienced my first mouse. I was married and we had a daughter who was around 10 years old. We had moved into a two-story building that was 127 years old. We lived in the apartment upstairs while I ran a business downstairs. We had a pet kitty cat and a pet wolf-dog.

After work one day I went upstairs (that’s how easy it was to go home; no commute other than a short flight of stairs). When I entered the apartment I was greeted by pandemonium. There was a mouse in the house!

My wife greeted me at the door and apprised me of the situation. I went into the living room to see that the kitty cat and the wolf-dog were chasing a little mouse around the room. Our daughter was on the couch, her legs up under her rather than on the floor. She looked at me with a smile, “Look Dad, the dog and cat have a new pet!”

And that is exactly how the kitty cat and wolf-dog were treating the mouse. They weren’t killing it like one would think their instincts would dictate. Instead they were playing with it. And they were having a ball!

I surveyed the scene wondering what I should do. My wife went into the kitchen and came back with two glasses, handing me one. A cocktail? I asked, “What’s the occasion?”

She snorted, “We have a mouse in the house!”

“Oh.”

She led me out of the apartment and down the stairs. We went out into the back yard and drank our cocktails while we looked up into the night sky. We talked about all sorts of things, none of which had to do with mice. When our glasses were empty we went back inside and headed up the stairs.

Back in the apartment we went into the living room. In the middle of the floor was a mouse that was not moving at all. I immediately knew it was dead. The kitty cat and wolf-dog were lying on the floor with their noses just a few inches away from the dead mouse. They both looked up at me when I entered the room with sad eyes as if to say, “There’s something wrong with our pet. It’s not moving anymore.”

Our daughter, her legs now on the floor, said, “I think they played with the mouse to death.”

I looked at my wife who looked back at me with those loving eyes that seemed to say, “So what are YOU going to do now?

So I went into the kitchen and got a plastic grocery store bag and I opened a drawer and retrieved the tongs I used to barbecue with. I went back into the living room.

“Hey, we use those tongs to cook with,” my wife said gingerly.

“Don’t worry, I’ll boil them.”

I bent over and picked up the dead mouse with the barbecue tongs and placed it in the plastic grocery bag. I tied the bag and then went back into the kitchen to the garbage can.

The kitty cat, the wolf-dog, our daughter, and my wife all immediately followed me. As I dropped the grocery bag with the dead mouse in it into the garbage can I looked at my multi-specie family. They were all looking at me with sad, weepy eyes. It was like a funeral and it was like I was somehow the bad, evil exterminator.

With the mouse in the garbage can I felt relieved but when I looked at the audience I felt horrible. I felt briefly like my mother. I felt like the person who ended all the fun. I felt like a killer.

My wife turned her head to the side as if to say, “So what the hell are you going to do now?”

I looked at the children (our daughter and the animals) and they all looked so sad. I then looked back at my wife who looked like she was wondering if I really had any testicles.

With the dead mouse inside the bag inside the trash, I then pulled the bag out of the trashcan and tied it up. I then took the bag of trash outside to the dumpster out back. On my way back inside I stopped to look up at the moon and contemplate the universe. The fresh night air seemed to cleanse me.

Back upstairs in the apartment everything seemed to return to normal. When I entered all eyes, both human and animal, were once again looking at me. Instead of asking, “Where’s our little mouse friend?” they were instead asking, “So what’s for dinner?”

I smiled and went into the kitchen. I began cooking dinner for my strange little family and I was sure not to use those tongs.